Souderton girls, Pennridge boys earn wins in the water

Pennridge fired — and hit — from both sides, from several spots, and Souderton Area was in deep early.

“They were really good with the communication today. They were talking, knew where to put the ball,” Rams coach David Apple said of his attack. “They were on today, definitely above 50 percent with their shots.

“They were all shooting when they were supposed to, passed when they were getting crashed on, and they knew when the threat was there and found the open guy.”

Josh Yardley scored six goals, set up two others, Kevin Jones added four tallies and two assists and Pennridge got goals from five players in all in an impressive 15-5 victory over a rapidly-improving Big Red squad.

In the first half of the rivalry doubleheader, the Souderton Area girls clamped down defensively and had plenty of offensive surge in an 11-5 win over the Rams.

With the Pennridge Natatorium packed, pretty much everyone decked out in either green or red and the school band playing to the capacity crowd, the Pennridge boys rocked to an early 7-0 lead.

“We were just thinking ‘slow it down, and play our offensive set-up,’” Yardley said, “‘and try and get some movement on the plays.’

“We focused on not letting them counter us because they’re a pretty fast team. We were trying to get back on defense before they could set up their offense.”

The Rams also got three goals from Ethan Lionetti in pulling away from Big Red. The Indians, led by Brandon Long’s three goals, got into a much better flow after the break.

“We let the game get away from us in the first period,” Big Red coach Joe Hay said. “We had way too many turnovers. It was a good wake-up call for my guys. That’s a good game to gauge where we are right now and see where we need to get better.”

The Big Red girls gave up an early goal but then controlled things the rest of the first half, building a 6-2 lead by the intermission.

“The girls played really solid, as usual,” Hay said. “We’ve got a number of experienced girls there that really know how to play. Their defense is stellar and has been since Week One. They’ve got a really good press.”

K.K. Hershey had five steals for Souderton and added a pair of scores. Tuesday night’s atmosphere provided all four teams an early preview of the postseason.

“We’ve only lost to North Penn in the conference, so we’re looking pretty good, and we’ve got La Salle on Friday so if we win that we should be the No. 2 seed going into the Eastern Conference,” Yardley said.